Sharing – Don’t insist on being positive – allowing negative emotions has much to teach us
The article goes on to discuss the various ways those emotions we are trying to avoid by always being positive are actually good for us. How sitting with and processing those emotions help us learn and grow.
Of course, the one thing I will say about that is this. Be prepared to do that work alone, or very nearly alone. The world is full of people who are not comfortable with their pain, sadness, grief, etc., and refuse to do anything but “be grateful.” They also have zero tolerance for other people “bringing them down” with their own emotions.
These people are not capable of being a support to anyone else. The refusal to acknowledge the entirety of human emotion makes them utterly incapable of sitting with someone in their pain. Sadly, as these ideas have gained popularity, they have also limited our support networks. They have created a shortage of people who will sit with us.
Sharing – Raising Critical Thinkers: A Parent’s Guide to Growing Wise Kids in the Digital Age
We would do well with more of this question and a deeper analysis of “says who” and less outrage. They won’t make it easy for us to do that, so we will have to do it for ourselves, and we’re going to have to teach the next generation.
Otherwise we will continue to see social media eat away at our mental health instead of being a tool that could help it by providing us with a community of people with shared interests.
Reviews Elsewhere – The Strange & Curious Guide to Trauma by Sally Donovan
I came across this review when someone shared it on social media, and it got picked up and passed around a bit. The review is from the Foster Talk page, which is aimed at Foster families and intersects the topics here when we talk about childhood trauma. Ruth Willets shared this about the book, which might be of interest to many of you who have teens and kids who have experienced trauma, or maybe even some young adults who could use some help understanding what trauma does to us.
Reviews Elsewhere – The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How we Learn from Love and Loss.
Losing a spouse, parent, sibling, etc. for me would be different than losing one of my friends. I love them differently, and I imagine I would grieve differently.. Losing anyone you love hurts but you likely have a variety of different relationships with people so it only makes sense that you would grieve them differently too, and then it also becomes obvious that we all will grieve differently from each other. There’s no straight line, there’s no “normal” way to grieve, there is just one individual processing the loss of another person that they had a unique connection to.
Wherever you are in that process is where you are. It’s not a contest and it’s not a pre-defined timeline. It’s a loss and you are free to mourn that.
Sharing – What American Mental Health Care Is Missing
We actually know the things that can offer hope, we just don’t have a system that can deliver them. Our system is broken, the medical community can offer medicine and some limited treatment options but the day-to-day support and the work to reach a state of something more than symptom reduction doesn’t actually exist for most people.
This has to change. Go read more of what he has to say, I think for many of you it will seem familiar, but maybe provide some hope that we are not alone in seeing it.
Now if we can just find enough of us to care enough to fix it. We should all want to, mental health issues will happen to someone we all know and care about, eventually. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to offer a system that does not involve homelessness and prison time for far too many?